


The World Before Columbus

by atomicflea



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, But I do mention masturbation, Deckerstar - Freeform, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Porn, F/M, Hell, No Sex, POV Lucifer, Post-Season/Series 04, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-04-07 22:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicflea/pseuds/atomicflea
Summary: Post S4. Finale. Lucifer has a think about where he ended up after the events of Season 4. This was originally a one-shot of Lucifer's POV post 410 and now Chloe is whispering to me.





	1. The Worth of You, So Rare

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me while listening to this particular Suzanne Vega song in the car. No real plot, just the urge to give our boy some sort of emotional victory after the brutal end of S4. First thing I have ever written for this series, so comments welcome and encouraged.  
> This was originally a one-shot of Lucifer's POV post 410 and now Chloe is whispering to me so it will probably turn into a multi-chapter with a crap update schedule...and by that I mean no update schedule. Read at your own risk!

 

> _If your love were taken from me_  
>  _Every light that's bright would soon go dim_  
>  _It would be as dark as the world before Columbus_  
>  _Down the waterfall and I'd swim over the brim_
> 
> _Those men who lust for land_  
>  _And for riches strange and new_  
>  _Who love those trinkets of desire_  
>  _Oh they will never have you_
> 
> _And they'll never know the gold_  
>  _Or the copper in your hair_  
>  _How could they weigh the worth_  
>  _Of you_
> 
> _So_  
>  _Rare_
> 
> -Suzanne Vega

 

I’ve always found it curious that paintings of Hell, since time immemorial, depict it as a fiery pit. Humans are rarely lacking in imagination, but if I never see another horned goat-man wreathed in orange and red standing in what looks like a coal mine, I’ll be dad-damned grateful. What their obsession with goat legs is, I’ll never know. That’s one for Dr. Linda – not that I’ll see her anytime soon. I won’t see any of them.

The thought brings with it a rush of pain that presses down on my chest and dulls the constant moans of the damned. For all that I’m surrounded by endless rooms populated by every miscreant in history deemed deserving of punishment, I’m alone. Worse yet, I’ve had just enough therapy to recognize that I’m also _lonely_ , deprived of my friends, my brother… _her_. I can’t bear to think of her by name, and I won’t say it aloud here, blessing this foul place with the closest thing to a prayer I know. I glance at my blood-red pocket square, the same one I wore when she almost took a bullet for me, and think of the cut on my hand the day she told me she was terrified. The splash of color is vivid in the otherwise bleak landscape, symbols of my vulnerability, of our history, of the things and emotions that tie us together.  Hell isn’t red. Hell is cold, and black and blue as a bruise that never heals. The last ridiculously oversize shirt I saw her in was black, with tiny white stars on it. I wanted to fall into her like a black hole, like my own universe, like the new reality I gifted Mum. Instead, I watch ash fall gently as Chinese water torture on my shoulders, disappearing before it accumulates and then falling again, recycling itself like the elements of a star.

Eternity yawns like the hungry mouth of some great beast, and I drink in my memories of her like an unending tumbler of the finest scotch.

The way her skin glowed golden in my dress shirt, tousled as a bride in my bed.

That minuscule tug of her hair on my beard when I hold her, and she finally pulls away.

The beauty mark under her right eye, punctuating cheekbones that arch in the exact same angle as her brows.

You would think that, after weeks that seemed like months, I would have forgotten the way her hair looked all piled up on her birthday, the beach-glass clarity of her irises or the way neither of us breathed during the infinitesimal progress of her parted mouth towards mine that first time on the beach. If anything, my memory has become more acute, the moments playing and replaying on a loop like the dramatic crescendo of a rock opera. The Alanis-like irony of it all is that I can’t imagine heaven being much better than my version of hell. I want to never think of her again. I want to see her roll her eyes at me. I want to trace my initial on the bow of her lips with my fingers, my tongue.

This brings me to another point: the realm of the damned is a helluva (pun intended) place to practice abstinence. The detective is a smart, capable, loving woman. She’s also a grade-A fox with a mouth like a grenade. Inevitably, thoughts of my hot tub hottie turn into daydreams that would put Pornhub to shame.  It doesn’t help to know that my Father basically genetically engineered my soulmate, so our physical compatibility is, in short, divine. For all that I resent the hell out of his interference, I’m a little miffed I never gave her the best night of her life.  The knowledge that my first bout of lovemaking would have undoubtedly outdone the sum of over a millennia’s worth of sexual escapades was positively _haunting_ me. Just another reason to resent the old man.

If you’ve ever wondered if jerking the old gherkin in hell provides any relief, let me enlighten you. It does not.

Still, the bulk of my pain is centered a bit further up my body. The charcoal shadows remind me of her eyes, the stone edifices of the planes of her face. This was my home before Los Angeles existed, and yet it is alien to me. There is no kindness here, no good, except for the parts of her that I carry with me. No life except for what I remember of our shared time. The land of the unforgiven stretches as far as my eye can see, punishing in its desolation.

In theory, I suppose, Dad won.

I am where He wanted me to be, but only in body. He can’t take my ultimate victory. It lives beyond his power. The barren cliffs are hard as guilt, unyielding as eternal punishment, and none of them seem as real as the moment when she said she loved me. The moment when she begged me not to leave her.

 _I never did_ , _Chloe_ , I tell the part of her soul that is mine. _I can’t._

 

 


	2. I’ll Follow You Into the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Lucifer mulls over their separation, Chloe has her own issues.

 

>   _If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied_
> 
> _And illuminate the NO's on their vacancy signs_
> 
> _If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks_
> 
> _Then I'll follow you into the dark_
> 
> -Death Cab for Cutie
> 
>  
> 
>  

I’m dreaming.

I know I’m dreaming, because he’s here.

I’m sitting next to him on the piano bench at Lux, my head pillowed on his shoulder as he plays for me, a warmth at my back which I know without looking is the radiant heat from his unfurled wings.

I love Trixie more than life, and my job is my calling. I can’t complain, really. I am getting by. But I know for a fact that I’m dreaming because I’m _happy_.

 

We don’t speak. Even in dreams, I ask for so little. Just to be next to him, feel his joy as he makes music. As the song ends, his eyes meet mine, so dark they reflect the bar’s lights like tiny stars, galaxies of regret shining back at me. I take his hand and trace letters on his palm with the tip of my index finger, scared to speak, irrationally paranoid.

_I-L-O-V-_

A loud buzzing cuts through the silence, and we both flinch. My vision dims, goes dark, and I wake up.

 

I take a minute to think about the song he played and scribble it onto the notebook on my nightstand. I’m trying to keep a list, just in case there’s something there, some thread I can pull on later that will tell me whether this is a solo delusion or more of _folie à deux_. I don’t question how my running playlist might work to counteract the will of God. Lord’s gotta ordain, detective’s gotta detect.  

That mundane task accomplished, I roll out of bed and avoid the mirrors that will remind me of how tired I look, despite all the sleep I’m getting. I shower, pack Trixie’s lunch. I go to work, see Dan. I work a murder case…alone.  They know better than to assign me another partner.  I fill out a report and chuckle to myself as I type in the address: 6669 De Longpre. _Lucifer would have gotten a kick out of that._ I look up to tell him, and remember he isn’t there. Suddenly, I could scream the world down with the sheer volume of my rage.

 

I manage to convince myself I’m fine until I realize I’m not.

 

Our timing was never the most reliable aspect of our partnership, but now he’s gone, it grates especially hard that I couldn’t get my emotional shit together well enough to tell my soulmate I loved him until moments before he caught the Angel Wing Express to the Underworld. Actual Hell…which is a thing that offends me with its reality. I guess I can’t say I’m agnostic anymore, but they haven’t invented a word for “My potential father-in-law created the universe but screw that dude, I refuse to credit him,” so I’ve put in a pin in that particular chapter in this magnum opus of fuckery for the time being.

 

Can you tell I’m angry?

I feel like maybe, just this once, I have a right to be. My entire existence is a plot device. A bone fide miracle, no more than a flesh muppet made for Him to shove His holy hand up and amuse himself. If these past few months have left me with anything besides a grudging acceptance of the basic tenets of Judeo-Christian faith, it’s a real empathy with Lucifer’s dearth of fucks where Dear Dad is concerned. I push my resentment into its usual dark cell until the end of my shift, through Taco Tuesday, homework, and Trixie’s bedtime. I wait until I’m alone, sitting in the kitchen, and I do something I’ve never done before: I press my palms together, and look out and upwards at the stygian night sky, dark as his son’s beautiful eyes.

 

“All right, asshole. Enough’s enough. You and I are going to have a talk.” I pause for a moment, my sense of self-preservation kicking in. after taking and releasing a single, deep breath, I start over. “It’s going to be really hard not to come from a place of anger here. I’m not one for belief in things I can’t see, but I am…I believe in justice. I have to believe it’s all worth something. And the way things are now… everything is just _bullshit_. I can’t think this is what you wanted. This can’t be what you wanted for him.” As I’m speaking, I notice something white dart past my window, hear the soft beating of wings, and my heartbeat seizes.

 

I run to the window to search the dark, and see the pale outline of single dove, perched on a tree limb at eye level, almost luminescent in contrast to the canopy of leaves behind it. I’m not sure why I keep talking, but the words pour out of me with an urgency I can barely control, the day’s equanimity pouring out of me like water from a sieve.

 

“I have a daughter. I’m a parent, like you. And they make mistakes. They don’t know what you know. They have to learn, and part of the job is enforcement, but…part of it is mercy. Part of it is recognizing that what they learn, they learn from us. And if Lucifer might be single-minded, autocratic, egotistical, resentful… but it’s _because you made him that way_. And if you’re omnipotent, if you did all that, then it was on purpose, it was for a reason, it had to be worth something. So FIX IT. Because…” My voice breaks, and I’m surprised to feel tears leak into the corners of my mouth. “…Because he’s yours. If his vices are yours, then so are his virtues. If he’s kind, and empathetic, and loving, and just and _fair_ it’s because you put it there and I know the world believes the best of you but I _can’t_. I can’t because I am a parent, and I would _die_ before doing to my child what you did to yours. The only reason I believe you can be good is because _he is_. So FIX IT. Fix it, or FUCK OFF.”

 

The dove tilts its head in a mimicry of an inquisitive child, and spreads its wings. The branch it’s perched on bursts into flames, and I hear a voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere, like a memory happening in real time. It’s not English it speaks, but it’s what I hear.

 “ _Non turbetur cor vestrus. Creditis in Deum_.”

At least the arrogant delivery reassures me I’ve got the right guy. DNA (or the divine equivalent) will tell. If there’s one good thing that came of my little crisis of faith, it’s a new feeling of empowerment. God as omniscient superbeing is intimidating as hell, an insurmountable problem. God as deadbeat dad? I’ve got experience with those.

 

“I believe what I can see, Mr. Morningstar.” Did Lucifer have his dad’s last name? “Lord. Lord Morningstar. Whatever you call yourself that isn’t as pretentious as _God_. Fix it. Fix it, or I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Latin: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God."  
> Chloe sure is a feisty, blasphemous little thing, isn't she? I'm interested to see how this pans out.


End file.
